Media Coverage of ConnectOakland

Media coverage of ConnectOakland

Media coverage and links to stories about the ConnectOakland Vision and the effort to rethink I-980 in Oakland.

Mercury News 1/30/2017:

The other potential benefit would be to use the corridor for a second transbay rail crossing for BART that would also provide an East Bay connection to Caltrain and high-speed rail, Sensenig said. The below-grade route could be built at the same time the freeway is converted into a boulevard, or because that project is likely decades away, could create a space underground for the transit lines, when and if that project come to fruition.

East Bay Times 1/30/2017:

Today, however, the highway is underutilized, reaching only 41.9 percent capacity at its peak, with average levels much lower, according to a UC Berkeley study of the corridor. Connect Oakland, along with the city of Oakland, proposes removing the freeway to its intersection with Grand Avenue, where traffic volumes peak at just over 27 percent of the roadway’s intended capacity.

San Francisco Chronicle 1/31/2017:

Demolition of the freeway has also gained the support of Oakland’s government in recent years, including Mayor Libby Schaaf, who in the report called I-980 a “cautionary tale.”
Created as part of a proposal to build another Bay Bridge, as well as a shopping mall, the stretch of interstate has actually left a “scar across our city that separates residents from opportunity,” Schaaf and others argue.

San Francisco Business Times 1/30/2017:

Streetsblog SF 12/09/15:

Looking at the surviving houses and walking along the banks of this freeway, I was struck by how the same pattern scarred cities across America. When I was growing up, my relatives bemoaned the disastrous impact of the Cross Bronx Expressway on their once great neighborhoods in New York. Building freeways between cities is fine. But the uniquely American decision to cut up and obliterate historic city neighborhoods and downtowns for massive freeway projects is difficult to comprehend.

San Francisco Chronicle 11/24/2015:

But the only way to find out is to conduct a serious study. And not in isolation, but as part of a larger regional focus on two simple questions: How will those of us living and working in the Bay Area get from point A to point B in the decades to come? And how do we thread new pathways, or rethink old ones, through places where the ways people live and work continue to evolve?

San Francisco Chronicle 11/14/2015:

The best course for Oakland is the one it’s on. Aim high and explore how changes to a local freeway could be a regional catalyst. At the same time, don’t make your dreams so big and intricate that they’re unbuildable ideals.

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About ConnectOakland

Connect Oakland is a self- organized advocacy organization. We volunteer our time to promote rethinking the underutilized I-980 corridor into a vibrant community that will reconnect West Oakland to Downtown.